President Donald Trump’s speech on the opening night of his Republican midterms convention in Dallas, Texas, was marred by a bad technical glitch and large sections of empty seating, despite his insistence the arena was “packed.”

The two-day “Trump-a-palooza” summit had threatened to be a disaster before it began, with many congressional Republicans making their excuses and declining to attend and the timing of the televised event likely to cost it viewers, given that it clashed with the NFL season opener.

When the president finally took to the stage at the American Airlines Center, he bragged about the size of the crowd inside the 21,000-capacity venue, only for his boast to be contradicted by photos and video posted on social media by attendees like Liz Landers of PBS, who panned her camera to reveal blocs of vacant seats.

“Not only is this packed, but you have an equal number of people standing outside,” the president insisted. “We have an amazing response. They love our party. They love what we’re doing.”

Among those fact-checking Trump’s declaration was Reuters White House correspondent Nandita Bose, who posted a view from her seat with the caption: “Trump keeps talking about the arena being full and obsessing over capacity.

“It isn’t. The upper decks are empty, large stretches of the side sections remain sparsely filled, and even with Trump onstage the arena is clearly not at capacity.”

The problem worsened as the president’s speech dragged on well beyond its planned 45-minute duration.

“As President Trump passes the 90 minute mark of his speech and insists nobody has left the arena, it’s clear that lots of folks have left the arena,” posted Garrett Haake of NBC News.

“Trump’s gaslighting on full display to the few people who are still there,” wrote anti-MAGA pundit Ed Krassenstein, reposting Haake’s footage.

“He’s literally trying to convince a half-empty stadium that they are filled. And most of them probably believed him.”

The president actually attempted to fend off such criticism during his speech, joking with the crowd about not going to the bathroom in case the media took a picture of their empty seat.

Trump began his first term by picking a fight with journalists about the size of the crowd that attended his January 2017 inauguration and more recently claimed that his Great American State Fair on the National Mall was attracting huge numbers of visitors, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary.

Also going viral from Dallas were posts about the huge screen positioned behind Trump, which began glitching unnervingly as the president began to speak, flashing up rapid-fire clips of speakers who had already appeared, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and UFC fighters Justin Gaethje and Bo Nickal.

The error was filmed by several journalists, who swiftly uploaded the evidence to social media, offering coverage from different vantage points.

Trump’s speech itself was as wild as expected, seeing him attempt to blame opposition Democrats for the ongoing affordability crisis, demand that Republicans push through his preferred voting reforms and claim he won the 2020 election he lost to Joe Biden.

He also promoted his stalled White House ballroom and championed Texas Senate candidate Ken Paxton, albeit by calling him ugly.

“He may not dress right,” Trump said of his party’s candidate. “He may not talk exactly perfectly, and he may not be the best-looking guy I’ve ever seen, but you know what he is?

“He’s the greatest attorney general in America, and he deserves to be your next senator.”

To make amends, the president also referred to Paxton’s rival, Democratic rising star James Talarico, as “weird-looking.”

Trump’s most eye-catching claim of the night was his promise to give voters $5,000 checks as a reward for the GOP maintaining control of the House of Representatives and Senate in November.

The pledge is already inviting questions as it would likely cost as much as $1.3 trillion dollars to execute and may not in fact be legal, drawing accusations of vote-buying.